Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Maybelle Wallis

What inspired you to write “Heart of Cruelty”?

Wallis: I read about the history of coroners and realised how tenuous the grip of forensic science had been on inquests in the Victorian period. Coroner Doughty, my male lead character, was partly inspired by Thomas Wakley, a Victorian doctor who founded The Lancet medical journal and also became a Coroner and a campaigning politician. Jane Eyre is a massive influence - acknowledged in the name of my female lead. 

The storyline of Heart of Cruelty evolved gradually and drew on modern day events - the Jimmy Savile and Harvey Weinstein abuse scandals and the mother-and-baby homes scandal here in Ireland. I also learned from some aspects of my day job as a paediatrician. I have attended Coroner’s inquests and child protection court cases as a professional witness and I know how difficult it can be to establish the truth in legal proceedings. After Jimmy Savile, everyone asked ‘But how could this happen?’: a celebrity abusing in plain sight, unchallenged. In Heart of Cruelty I’m exploring why it’s hard for victims to persuade others about a powerful abuser. 

Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process, or your book?

Wallis: I used to think history was an arts subject but now I regard it as a science: it’s about finding out the facts. I’m a painstaking writer and I think I’ve checked every historical detail against primary sources: newspapers and medical journals of the period, the websites of museums and so forth. Vocabulary was checked against the Oxford English Dictionary to ensure it was current at the time. Most of my research was done online but I was living in Birmingham, UK, at the time I wrote the book, so I was well aware of what remains of the city’s 19th century heritage.

Heart of Cruelty contains a bittersweet love story but I didn’t intend it to be a feel-good romance and some historical romance readers might be disappointed. Readers who have enjoyed the book have described it as a ‘page-turner’ and I’ve worked hard to keep the plot twisting along. It’s a dark book, and my friends have been surprised that a nice gentle-mannered paediatrician could write such a thing, but I have encountered much darkness in my life, both professionally - thinking of many child protection cases I have dealt with over the years - and during my own childhood.

When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?

Wallis: I tell myself that nothing I’m about to write has to be read by anyone else, and that it can always be deleted. I write at random, whatever comes into my head, hoping that a concept will start to take shape. I’ve read a lot about the need to silence the inner, critical voice - well for me it’s that same voice that writes the story, so it’s a question of living with the inner voice and coaxing it into creativity. Dictation is a good way of channelling the inner voice and for a first draft I use the speech-to-text facility on my Mac which, although it requires corrections, is a lot faster than typing.

Another ploy is to edit a rough draft or to critique someone else’s work. I hold precious my critique group of historical fiction writers: Annette Liebeskind Berkovits, Jo Schaffel and Joanna Orwin. If all that fails, the writer’s block is due to tiredness, in which case I need to rest. Going for a walk - I’m lucky to live on Forth Mountain in Wexford, with views of the south-east coast of Ireland - and breathing in the damp scent of spruce trees and mossy ground is restorative. Or having a nap. Social media can be exhausting, and fatigue is often a sign that my screen time needs to be reduced.

Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?

Wallis: I guess that like me, most aspiring authors already have a day job or other commitments. Writing a novel is a question of finding quiet time and space away from the clamour of the day. Rising super early in the morning  - even if half asleep - works for me. The ideal is to start writing still fresh from sleep without first checking the news (tricky), emails (hard) or social media (almost impossible). That way I’m still in tune with my subconscious, dreaming mind. 

I use Scrivener which helps to keep all my bits of draft organised and so I don’t handwrite anything. I draft directly on to a Mac and have switched off all my notifications so that they can’t distract. As I sometimes dictate, I have an external mic on my desk which connects to headphones, and I repeat the same playlist over and over - the late Andy Weatherall’s remixes in a style which I’d term ‘Gothic disco’: Haunted Dancehall is one example. If I start the day with an hour of writing I find that afterwards my novel tends to ferment at the back of my brain. Often ideas occur to me later when I’m away from my novel and I save them on my phone, using Google Keep.

What are you working on next?

Wallis: In the sequel, City of Famine,  Jane and Doughty meet again in Dublin during the late 1840s. She is a professional pianist and has married Edmond Verity; when their theatre company is ruined by a pandemic and he dies under the care of an unscrupulous physician, will she decide that love is more important than success? The setting may seem strangely familiar: the wealthy lead a glittering social life and the refugees from rural famine and landlord evictions are packed into squalid tenements. Epidemic diseases - cholera and typhus - are rife and an incompetent and corrupt government is in power. 

I’m hoping to complete it by this summer.

Learn More About the Author and Heart of Cruelty Here:

Author Website: www.HistWriter.com (ChateauxEnEspagne.com)

Heart of Cruelty Webpage: https://wp.me/P2aHMc-177

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MWallisHistWriter

Twitter: @DrMWallis

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmwallis_histwriter/

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